B-Greek: The Biblical Greek Forum

Tell us about interesting projects involving biblical Greek. Collaborative projects involving biblical Greek may use this forum for their communication - please contact jonathan.robie@ibiblio.org if you want to use this forum for your project.

Greetings,
I'm looking for a few good eyeballs (backed up by a solid grasp of Greek). I've spent considerable effort creating a flexible tool that generates unique original-language Bible study tools (Kindle, EPUB, and PDF), based on public domain texts. I'm looking for kindred spirits to participate in revising and improving these resources, either for their own use or for use by others. I would appreciate assistance by knowledgeable Greek scholars to examine and review the resulting materials, or to provide input and feedback regarding the format and appearance of the resulting documents. I could continue trying to explain it, or I can let it speak for itself. I created a website that contains more information and free examples than I could possibly provide here: sites.google.com/site/thebridgebible (in particular, see 1 Overview > 4 Products, especially the Reference Edition in the bottom half of the page). I'm looking for partners and opinions, so please offer your candid assessments and appraisals. I am well aware that the current formats may not appeal to everyone on this forum, but significant changes can easily be made, to suit your needs or those of someone else. What hasn't been easy is obtaining informed insight on content and design. Please let me know what you think, and if you want to participate in further development and dissemination of these or derivative resources.
Gratefully,
Bob Vorick

Is there a reason that you don't transliterate the words in the original Greek sentences? I'm guessing that people who use this will pronounce the transliterated text and think they are reading a sentence when they are just reading a list of words as they would be found in a dictionary. If you are going to provide a transliteration, please transliterate the Greek sentences, with punctuation.

I'm also not sure how a beginner would use the information in these screens. I downloaded the Kindle edition of Philippians and clicked on the verse number for 1:3, which shows me this:

I would much prefer contextual glosses like the ones we use for Nestle1904 (originally done by BibleHub), since they give some notion of the syntax, and I would prefer to spell out the parse codes so that even beginners start to get familiar with the basic ways we talk about Greek syntax. Instead of scattering information about each word, I would prefer to put the basic information about each word in a single row. Add transliteration and Strong's if you must, and perhaps add glosses from Mounce if you want to show the relationship between the meaning in context and what you might find in a lexicon. But with hyperlinks, who needs Strong's in this display? Why not provide Strong's numbers in the lexicon and save that space?

Here's the display I use in the greeksyntax module for similar information:

Moderator note: I am approving this post, but please let me or another moderator know your real name so that we can change your screen name accordingly, per B-Greek policy. --BH

Hi Bob,
I understand your need to recruit those with an in depth knowledge of Greek, on the other hand, it seems to me that even before that, you might need input from guys like me who know nothing and have a strong desire the understand Scripture without investing a lifetime studying the languages. We are your "market" after all.
When I was teaching my daughter to read, she became upset, saying, "I don't want to learn the ABCs, just teach me to read. We know what is essential in order to read, but becoming a linguist or trusting someone else's understanding of words is typically not on the "to do" list of most Christians.
I believe an analytical program is very important and more desirable than another translation. We need a greater understanding since words have multiple meanings in various stituations and areas at different times.
Since word meanings constantly change, our Father communicates to us through the inconvenience of words, and as we are foremost spiritual beings needing to understand a spiritual Book, so it is important that the words be accurate. We need a more fluid way to learn and to update our understanding of words written millennia ago.
I am too old and too involved in living out my understanding of words to research what was meant by thousands of words ancient words, but it is vitally important to me and all others.
And you are guardians of that precious key.

I understand your need to recruit those with an in depth knowledge of Greek, on the other hand, it seems to me that even before that, you might need input from guys like me who know nothing and have a strong desire the understand Scripture without investing a lifetime studying the languages. We are your "market" after all.

Actually, no. That is not the market for B-Greek. It takes significant investment to learn to actually read Greek.

When I was teaching my daughter to read, she became upset, saying, "I don't want to learn the ABCs, just teach me to read. We know what is essential in order to read, but becoming a linguist or trusting someone else's understanding of words is typically not on the "to do" list of most Christians.

Reading a foreign language is very different from becoming a linguist. To some extent, we have to learn from what others know, testing it carefully as we go, like a man walking on an iced-over lake. You learn which sections of ice you can trust by walking carefully and observing as you go.

I believe an analytical program is very important and more desirable than another translation. We need a greater understanding since words have multiple meanings in various stituations and areas at different times.

To me, the real issue is that we want people to learn to read sentences, and analyzing individual words does not tell these people what they need to know to put the words together into sentences. They need syntax for that. They need to learn the language. Your daughter learned to read without this because she already knew English fluently.

On B-Greek, our market is people who want to be able to read Greek the way they read English, people who teach this skill, and people who want to use that skill to read the texts. That doesn't mean that tools for other groups can't be useful, but they are not the focus here.